


I Want You to Notice When I'm Not Around

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Double Agents, F/M, Falling In Love With Your Target
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:58:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1074049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re not supposed to feel sentimental about your targets, but then again, Leo Fitz was never a particularly good field operative.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Want You to Notice When I'm Not Around

**Author's Note:**

> Alright so a while ago I reblogged [this](http://fuckyeahelizabethhenstridge.tumblr.com/post/67965564930/jemma-simmons-i-like-following-the-rules-and) picture and in the tags I sort of rambled about how this made me think of like a Serial Killer AU or something where somebody had like a wall of pictures of her, but like as a target. Anyways, my tag rambling caught the attention of [Tiff](http://wyndmpryce.tumblr.com/) who encouraged me and helped me figure out just how this was going to work. It then snowballed into this AU which features Fitz as a HYDRA operative whose mission is to kill Simmons and yeah. 
> 
> Enjoy?

 

He’s got a wall of her photographs pinned to the apartment that they rented out for him under an assumed name. Snapshots some years old, showing just how long HYDRA had been tracking her. There’s one from her academy days, lab goggles slipping forward over her nose, all the way up to more recent ones, she’s in a navy blue jumper standing around a Midwestern barn with other agents all whose names are marked accordingly. Though his favorite of all the pictures is not one of the ones that was sent to him by his superiors, but something from his old collection that he pinned to the wall because he’s foolishly sentimental. The picture’s edges were frayed, but it was still clear who sat inside the frame, the same woman that was featured in all the other pictures, but younger this time with a wide grin on her face and a sweatshirt that read ‘ _MIT’._

You’re not supposed to feel sentimental about your targets, but then again, Leo Fitz was never a particularly good field operative.

His sentimentalities are the only reason he got assigned to this mission, or to be more precise Leo’s ability to not actually think before he informs HYDRA superiors that he went to school with their next target is what ended him up in this mess.

He’s not a field agent. He builds weapons for field agents. Leo’s like the Q to their James Bonds, that is if MI6 was a fascist group set on world domination.

They’re not.

MI6 that is.

HYDRA on the other hand, well he tries not to think too hard about the aims of the group that pays him, because money is money and he didn’t have that many options when he finished university.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

Also he may have been a bit bitter about certain government organizations and the fact that he was no recruited by them, but he likes to think that he got over that bitterness years ago. 

Still, for all his bitterness, he had always just assumed that the extent of his involvement with HYDRA’s aims would have gone no further than the comfort of his lab, certainly he had completed their semi-rigorous field training, and he knew all the protocols, but actually being in the field and doing something had never been in his intentions.

However, he had clearly assumed wrong, since he currently was sitting in a rented apartment in San Francisco looking through files and listening in on planted bugs as he tries to track down the location of his target.

He had asked, why they couldn’t just send a sniper in for this mission, if they were so keen on killing her, but there was something else involved, a formula that would they needed for some biochemical weapon, something that she had developed. It wasn’t in circulation yet, though sources claimed that she kept the information on a flash drive that she wore like a necklace.

Leo’s task was supposed to be relatively simple, get close enough to get the formula then kill the target.

Which would have been hard enough to begin with, but his sentimentalities made it worse, because no matter how many times he read the line of the file that said, ‘ _Jemma Simmons – SHIELD Agent – Terminate’,_ it wasn’t getting any easier to swallow.

He can’t let his sentimentalities get in the way.

He can’t keep trying to remember the girl that used to laugh at his pathetic jokes at MIT all those years ago, who left him to become an agent for some faceless government organization.

That girl is gone.

If he messes this up, it’s his head on the line.

Leo’s grown a bit too attached to his head to let that one happen.

\---

“We’ve got a location on Simmons,” comes a voice crackling over his earpiece, Bartel is nothing if not quick in his reports, his accent a bit heavy but nothing Leo can’t distinguish.

“Go ahead,” he says, once he’s pulled a pad of paper out to write on.

“Two blocks from your 20, heading to a Starbucks on Union Street,”Bartel says, reading off the address which Leo quickly writes down.

He shoves the slip of paper into his pocket. “Got it, on my way.”

“Fitz,” Bartel says.

“Yes?”

“Just get in there, get what we need and get out. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

If he wasn’t so nervous about what was going to happen he would probably have dwelled on those words a bit more, but as it is his hands are shaking even as he checks to make sure his firearm is concealed that all Leo can really manage is a quick reply of, “understood,” before he’s out the door.

The trip to the coffee shop takes less time that he had original expected, and he makes himself busy by ordering a drink, when the barista asks his name he only hesitates for a moment before responses with the fake name that they gave him.

By the time the drink is finished though she’s arrived with somebody else in tow, a SHIELD agent who looks as if he would rather be anywhere else in the world than in the coffee shop, but who pays for their order which ends up being four drinks rather than just their own drinks.

He’s still lurking over by the pickup window nursing his soy latte as he takes in the situation, he can see when she turns how the light shines off the barest hit of a chain around her neck.

She hasn’t changed much over the years, her hair’s longer now, but that doesn’t come a surprise to him, he does have a wall of pictures and plenty of files on her, but it’s nothing compared to actually seeing her in person.

He has a plan for every possible situation, every outcome that could result from this encounter, except for the one that actually occurs. See never in all of the hypothetical situations that he had outlined was there one where she not only notices him but recognizes. A situation in which she turns to him, eyes bright, a smile clear on her face, and says, “Fitz?”

Except that’s exactly what she does.

For a moment, he stands there panicked his fingers tight on the coffee cup in his hand while his mind is moving a mile a minute.

Suddenly he has to throw everything the HYDRA operatives have told him out the window, he has to ignore the buzzing voice in his ear piece, Bartel giving him instructions on what excuses to give, and he has to figure out how to get out of the situation with the most minimal damage possible.

He’s never been good at thinking under pressure, and he finds that all he can say back is, “Simmons?”

But by some stroke of luck that seems to do the trick.

“Oh god, it really is you,” she says excitedly, ignoring the agent that she had come in with, and turning her whole attention to him, “I haven’t seen you since-“

“MIT,” he offers.

“Yes, I,” whatever she was about to say she never actually finishes it, because a second later she’s thrown her arms around him in a hug. He tenses on contact, before he relaxes into the familiar touch.

“It’s good to see you, Fitz,” she says, as her head lays pressed into his shoulder, “I’ve missed you.”

He needs to be focused on the goal. Though the hug he can feel her necklace, the flash drive pressed up against him, the one that hold the formula he needs.

He’s so close right now that he could probably do it, kill her, grab the necklace, and he’d just have to deal with secret agent man who is lurking off to the side, but for some reason he finds himself physically unable to make that move.

Unable to make his job simple and kill her now.  

“I’ve missed you too,” he says, forcing the words out and trying to tap down the feelings that are bubbling inside of him, because he isn’t supposed to have these feelings, they’re interfering with what should have been a simple mission, and probably would have been had they assigned any other agent.

After what feels like too brief a period of time Jemma pulls back out of his arms, the smile still bright on her face, and he finds himself mirroring it without thinking. He can’t really remember the last time he smiled sincerely, but this feels like as good of a moment as any.

“What are you doing here,” she finally asks, “I thought you would be back in Scotland, I know you got a grant for your research.”

Ah yes, the excuse he had given all those years ago.

It’s not as if one could simply say that they had been recruited by a group that was generally assumed to have nefarious intentions.

However, after Simmons had been offered a position in SHIELD, he would have given just about any excuse to disguise the hurt he felt about losing his friend to some vague yet menacing government organization, but that was years long past, and Leo liked to think that he was over that bit of bitterness.

He wasn’t really though.

Only now her question gave him some pause, because as far as all records were concerned Leo Fitz had fallen off the map years ago, last seen in a pub in Edenburgh, and then never heard from again. HYDRA took care of theirs, erasing people from the maps of the world, but then one thing they couldn’t wipe away other people’s memories, at least, not yet anyways.

And since, as it was Jemma apparently remembered him, he couldn’t use the fake career that had been associated with the alias that he had been assigned upon receiving this mission.

“Yes that’s an excellent question,” the agent that she came in with asks before Fitz can think up an answer to her question, his voice is gruff and causing a slight frown to tug at Jemma’s lips, something Leo wouldn’t have noticed had his concentration not been so focused on the woman before him.

With great pain he tears his eyes away from his target to size up the other agent, as all of the information he had been briefed on slots into place. Agent Grant Ward, SHIELD agent through and through, a few weeks back he took out of few of their agents on a mission in Bosnia, a mission that Simmons likely helped on. He’s one of the members of the team that she’s been going around with lately.

Instinctively Leo ends up falling back on an old tactic of making himself seem as small and unthreatening as possible, better that way, so he wouldn’t be suspected of being anything more than the answer that he gave.

He bites his lip a bit nervously, not an old habit, but a fake one that he can remember to use with relative ease, “I, it’s complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“Some fallings out with the university, grad school not exactly going the way I intended it to, and I guess I just needed a change of pace. I’m creating things, made these little nanobots that can scan and then render 3D models of them, of course,” he continues the lies not being something that comes easy to him – this is exactly why he is supposed to be in a lab not in the field, “you probably already have those sort of things, back at your super spy headquarters. All James Bond and stuff, yeah?”

His answer seems to work well enough for Agent Ward, though the agent doesn’t appear to entirely trust him. Simmons on the other hand, is far too eager to trust him, and lights up a smile at his story.

“That sounds amazing, Fitz!”

He was relatively certain that she was just humoring him with that comment, but it still brings a bright smile to his face without him even thinking about it. Okay, yeah, it’s not really that amazing, he made the device that he was talking about probably four or five years ago, but the compliment was still nice.

“Thanks,” he says brightly, “so, what about you guys? Or wait, is that classified?”

Leo knows exactly why they’re here, somebody showing some less than normal abilities. The sort of thing that SHIELD likes to butt their heads into. He also knows that it’s all a pretense, some homeless person HYDRA injected with one of their test serums, an excuse to draw this particular team it, which thankfully had worked out in his favor.    

Jemma looks like she’s trying to decide whether or not to tell him before breaking out in a little smile, “it is top secret, but,” because there’s always a but, “have you by any chance heard of a man that can turn green?”

“Like the hulk?”

“Not exactly,” she replies with a little breathless laugh, “same color, less enormous rage monster.”

“Wait you mean the guy who pretends to be a bush,” he asks voice dripping with faux-confusion, “I always figured he painted himself up like that.”

That seems to catch the attention of Mr. Secret Agent, because before Jemma can respond Ward has interrupted them again, “you know him?”

 _More than you know_ , Leo thinks, but what he actually says is, “Of him. Hangs around near my apartment complex, sort of creepy looking fella.”

“Could you show us,” Jemma asks, reaching out to grab Leo’s hand in hers and give it a reassuring squeeze.

“Of course!”

\---

By time they arrive at the destination Ward has apparently called in the rest of their team. A top level SHIELD agent his intel informs him is named Phil Coulson and a computer hacker called Skye new to their team that operatives at HYDRA believe may be a double agent for some up and coming group called the Rising Tide.

They’re introduced to him briefly, Jemma taking the time to introduce him to them as “an old friend from university.”

What starts as something that should have been an easy take down for them and an easy opportunity for Leo to get Jemma off on her own, turns into something a bit more serious all at once without him even realizing it until it’s too late.

“If I could just get a blood sample, I could develop an antiserum.”

“Something tells me he’s going to be less than willing.”

“He’s asleep, right now though. What’s the worst that could happen if I just crept over there and took a sample?”

Really Leo was beginning to question the logic of this team and their leader’s clear lack of leadership skills. Suddenly he was beginning to feel rather glad that SHIELD had not recruited him, because clearly they didn’t teach their operatives the most basic of survival skills. HYDRA was ten times more efficient, and that was saying something.

Honestly he’s not sure if he’s helping them or doing damage control for his own organization, but at this point Leo isn’t entirely sure that it matters, because that creature has its arm around Jemma’s throat locking her in place and these SHIELD agents actually have to clue what they’re doing.

One second he’s standing around listening to them attempt to come up with a plan of attack and the next second he’s going _fuck this_ and reaching into his bag to pull out something of his own creation.

“What’s that,” Ward asks.

“This, my friend,” he boasts, “is the Night-Night Gun.”

“The Night-Night-“ Ward starts before scoffing.

Leo ignores him and focuses on the target, the targets, technically they’re both targets, but in this case he decides that the homicidal green maniac is a bit more of a threat that the biologist. His training comes rushing forward as he holds the gun in his hand, and though he’s never actually had to fire at a real living person before, he holds onto the fact that technically this gun isn’t even lethal.

His finger is on the trigger quick as lightening, there’s a blue flash of light and woman’s scream, before the two bodies slump to the ground.

 “It worked,” Skye says sounds a bit too surprised for his liking.

“Of course it worked,” Leo replies smugly, clicking the safety back onto the devise, “I designed it.”

He’s in the middle of putting away the Night-Night Gun when he hears Ward and Coulson checking over Jemma to make sure that she’s alright. From the sound of their voices it seems as if everything is alright, though she is admittedly a bit frazzled.

“You saved me,” Jemma exclaims when she’s neared when he’s standing.

“I guess I did,” his voice shakes ever so slightly in response to her comment.

“I could have died,” Jemma says throwing her arms around him, and all he can think is _oh shit_ because that is exactly the result that they were looking for, and he had to mess everything up.

He wasn’t sure what he was thinking. No, Leo knew exactly what he had been thinking, he had let his nostalgia get in the way of his mission parameters.

This could have looked like an accident, nobody would have suspected him, but no he had to go in and save her life.

He was quite possibly the worst HYDRA operative in the history of moderate terrorist organizations.

No correction, he’s officially the worst HYDRA operative ever.

Why couldn’t they have just sent in a sniper?

\---

 “What would you think about coming with us and being a consultant for SHIELD,” Coulson asks once the mission is wrapped up and even more SHIELD agents have arrived to help with cleaning up the aftermath.

Leo had been sitting at the edge of the seen realizing that he had messed up, wondering how likely it was that he would still be alive this time tomorrow, that for a second he is caught off-guard by Coulson’s question.

“A consultant,” Leo echoes as the words sink it, “like your hacker girl.”

“Skye.”

He makes a vague noise of agreement. He’s not exactly sure that he enjoys being compared to some wild card hacker with absolutely no experience, but that is the front he’s trying to present, the no experience part in any case, so he supposes it works

“Something like that,” Coulson agrees after a pause, “Simmons mentioned that you’ve been working as a freelance inventor, developing nanotechnology? We all witnessed your tech in action, and I’m willing to offer you a place on my team for the time being.”

There’s a voice buzzing in his ear, before Leo can open his mouth and make a decision, Bartel ordering him to accept Coulson’s offer claiming that it will give him a better opportunity to get close enough to the target that he can complete the mission. The way Leo sees it though, is this is his one chance to avoid being shipped back to HYDRA headquarters and explaining how he not only managed to get his cover blown, but then accidently saved his targets life.

“So, I’ll be with you guys then, not back at some big fancy headquarters,” with Simmons he wants to ask, but it seems as if Coulson understand the question Leo’s not actually saying for he nods once..

“The bus leaves in an hour, we’ve got a 0-8-4 to check out. It leaves with or without you.”

He hesitates whether it’s part of the role he’s playing or honestly because Leo isn’t sure what to do, even he doesn’t know, but eventually he says “I’ll be there.”

\---

When he finally gets a chance to call into HQ, or well they call him, one never actually gets ahold of HYDRA unless they want you to. Their message is short and sweet, though not at all what he wanted to hear. They didn’t seem too displeased that he had managed to botch up the kidnap or kill plan that had been the original, and were actually excited for this new turn of events, maybe excited wasn’t the best word.

Simply put, they were liking this new arrangement, and with it came a change of orders.

See no more was to simply go in there and kill Simmons, no, now they wanted him to gain her trust, and to get her to give them the formula willingly. It was a lot less messy than them sending agents to break into the flying SHIELD station and take the formula.

Though there was one thing that was part of his mission parameters that had not changed, the message is clear, bold red caps that read _TARGET MUST BE TERMINATED._

So there is that.

\---

“Look at us two,” comes a voice interrupting all of his internal calculations.

She’s called Skye, some Rising Tide operative, though the information that he was given on her is rather limited, it seems that Agent Coulson has a habit of picking up strays, which worked to Fitz’s advantage in his case, but also added another wild card to his calculations.

“Pardon,” he asks, raising an eyebrow at her, as she takes the seat next to him.

“Two consultants,” she offers, “neither of us are SHIELD agents, so I guess that puts us in the same boat.”

“We are not the same.”

“I mean not the same same, but outsiders.”

Outsiders, hmm, more like infiltrators. “I’m not like one of your Rising Tide buddies-“

“No, but I know why you’re really here,” she interrupts him with confidence.

“Because your Agent Coulson has a soft spot for strays?”

“No.”

No.

That’s not possible.

This cannot be happening.

There’s absolutely no way for her to know, certainly Simmons had introduced her as some sort of hacker, but HYDRA had very secure servers, and he hadn’t used anything that she could have hacked. Except, well, there was that call earlier about his mission plans, but that is impossible.

Isn’t it?

His voice shakes ever so slightly, eyes move about the cabin once to double check that there is nobody around, before he turns to Skye and quickly ask, “why is it then?”

“It’s for Simmons, right.”

So that was it then, she knew. His mind instantly began to run through the possibilities, ways that he could silence her, bribe her, and eliminate the threat before it became too great.

He could do this, right?

“I mean, I’ve seen the way you look at her,” Skye continues, “it’s cute, you guys are cute. I just wanted to wish you the best of luck or whatever. You two must have been really close before, I mean, if she was able to drag you onto this flying circus, so you know.”

He breathes a sigh of relief at once. Thanking the gods on high that Skye didn’t actually know why he was there.

“Yeah, I know.”

\---

He’s not expecting to stay with them very long. Ideally he should have just gone with them to wherever their 0-8-4 was, managed to get Simmons on her own, taken the flash drive, finished the job, and waited for an extraction team to come in and get him.

Things end up going slightly less than according to plan when the 0-8-4 that they find happens to be slightly radioactive and there’s a whole mess involving that.

All he brought with him is his laptop bag and what he was able to stuff into a duffle bag during his brief spot at the apartment before getting on the plane. With such a limit on time he had spent more of his time trying to disguise the evidence around the apartment, certain that a HYDRA team would arrive to clear the place while he was gone, but unwilling to take any chances. However, in doing so he hadn’t exactly left himself much time for packing appropriately.

He had to ditch the earpiece at some point, didn’t want them getting suspicious of him, so he crushed the thing underfoot at Bartel’s orders and has ever since been going on without any sort of direction from his superiors other than the encrypted messages that end up coming to his phone from time to time, messages that Leo has made sure to take in private away from any prying eyes.

He doesn’t trust any of them, and he doubts anybody other than Simmons actually trusts him.

Skye might, but she doesn’t seem the best judge of character.

Coulson acts like he does, but Leo can feel a scrutinizing pair of eyes on him whenever they’re in the same room.

Ward makes no impression of even trying to trust him, though he seems like a naturally distrustful person so that’s probably more on him than a critique of Leo’s ability to remain undercover.

Their pilot, the Calvary is their pilot for god’s sake, hasn’t spoken more than two words to him, but he knows for a fact that she doesn’t trust him at all.

Then there’s Jemma, the one person who should be wary of him, but rather she smiles at him completely open and says how happy it is for them to be working together, just like the old days. She remises the nostalgia only making what he knows he has to do even worse. Jemma asks after his family, and he has to come up with some lies about them, no easy way to admit that he hasn’t talked to them since he joined HYDRA – he hasn’t talked to anybody. She even splits her sandwiches with him, prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella with a hint of homemade pesto aioli, remember that it was his favorite back at university.

They’ve just completed their third mission as a team, far longer than Leo expected and he had just finished sending off an encrypted file to Bartel with the information that he had gained on SHIELD in the past week and their ongoing struggle with AIM. 

He’s now read through news articles on his iPad while lounging on one of the couches, since their plane has couches apparently. When he notices somebody watching him from off to the side, his eyes flash up to meet hers instantly, “Hey,” he says a bit awkwardly pushing himself up into a sitting position and patting the spot next to him on the couch.

“Hey,” she echoes before settling down to sit beside him.

Jemma has a way of taking up space that had always amazed him, when they would study together during those long days at university he would always watch with amazement how she curl herself into a small space and press against him like it was nothing. Things had apparently not changed at all in her mind, years apart seemingly dissolved in the last week that he had been with their ragtag team. Without meaning to they end up mirroring each other in position on the couch, Leo likes to think that it’s his training shining through, but the position feels too natural for it to be anything other than instinct.

“I really missed you,” she says breaking the silence between them.

“I missed you too,” he says, finding he’s speaking from the heart when he says those words.

“You know, I always thought it would be the two of us against the world. All those years back at school. Do you remember what they used to call us?”

“Fitzsimmons,” he answers with a smile, “they dropped the ‘and’ after our third time being lab partners.”

“Right,” Jemma giggles, and he can’t help himself from laughing with her. It had been a silly nickname that had followed them around during their college days, but neither of them have very much minded it. Back then they had spent nearly every moment together, after their first year at MIT they had even ended up getting a flat together. He’d met her parents, who jokingly asked if they had eloped without anybody noticing it.

Leo had always expected that things would have stayed that way, Fitzsimmons the best lab partners in the world. In his mind he used to imagine that they would get a research grant together and become professors for some university when they refused to be separated.

That was until… How times had changed.

“I work better with you around,” she admits after a moment, “it’s like old times. Suddenly everything seems to make a lot more sense.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I wanted them to take you too,” Jemma says suddently, when she notices his confused look she continues, “when SHIELD recruited me. I told them that I wouldn’t go unless they took you too, because we were supposed to be together I just knew it.”

He’s not sure how to respond to that, because his whole time with HYDRA had been fueled by one thing resentment, resentment for the friend that had abandoned him and for SHIELD for taking her away from him.

“They obviously didn’t go along with that plan, something about not passing a background check? I’m not entirely sure, but oh Leo, I felt awful,” she really means it, he doesn’t have to look to hear the way her voice breaks a bit over the words, “I just couldn’t miss out on the opportunity.”

“And I would never have asked you to,” he says honestly.

She nods her head slowly, “Sometimes though I used to wonder, after we lost contact. I always held onto this small hoped that we would run into each other that some crazy random happenstance would end up with me bumping into you again. Finding you at that Starbucks was like a dream come true, because now we’re working together again, like we always should have been.”

A dream come true, more like a nightmare. He had expected Jemma to have forgotten about him, about that friend she had for a few years in school, but she never did, and he supposes that’s what makes the guilt inside of him grow even more.

“Do you ever thing about it,” she asks, “about what would have happened had things been different?”

Had she never left him for SHIELD. Had they recruited him as well. Of course he thought about it, back when he was sitting bitter in an underground HYDRA lab he had tried to imagine how things could have been different, and now sitting on this plane he finds himself spending far too much time wishing that he wasn’t here on a mission, that he wasn’t playing the role of the double agent, the one that was supposed to betray them all.

“All the time,” he admits.

“Me too.”

\---

He wakes in a cold sweat the night after that, his hands reaching for some way to light up the darkness of his bunk. Still shaking from the nightmare he’d just had.

It’s the not the usual one where they find out who he’s really working for and arrest him or kill him, it’s not the look of pure betrayal on a normally smiling face that brings him to such a panic that he can barely breathe.

This one was a new one, a nightmare in which he completes his mission according to plan, where he pulls the trigger and watches blood spill over the soft cotton of her blouse eyes wide and terrified as she struggles to drag air into her punctured lungs.

When he finally finds some source of light it’s his phone. The glow of the LED screen gives the room a slight blue tint as he doubles over to try and catch his breath.

He hasn’t had dreams these bad in years, not since the time when he helped to design the bombs that took down that one military base. When he had been discovered panicking before, he had ended up getting lectured at and almost kicked out of the organization. He had spent the weeks following desperate to prove his loyalty, unsure where he would have been without HYDRA.

Now though the dreams make him want to do the exact opposite. 

By the time he catches his breath he’s already got his phone open, pulling up the encryption files and typing out a simple message for Bartel, ‘ _What if I recruited her instead?’_

Less than a minute later he gets a reply, _‘Do you think that the target would defect willingly?’_

No, he doesn’t, but if there’s any way he could get out of killing her he’s willing to hold onto that possibility.

_‘Yes.’_

_‘Standby, I’ll offer it to the higher ups.’_

If nothing else, it’s worth a shot.

\---

It’s been two days and Leo hasn’t heard a reply back from Bartel, in fact he hasn’t heard anything from anyone at HYDRA and it makes him nervous. They just finished looking into something which actually ended up being nothing, and he’s getting antsier by the second waiting for something to happen, some news to arrive, so Leo nearly jumped when a voice calls out to him, “Coulson wants to see you.”

“What,” he squeaks back in reply, his heart still beating a mile a minute, Leo silently wills it to calm down as he turns to meet Ward’s less than amused glance.

“Coulson wants to see you in his office,” Ward replies, annoyance clear, before brushing past him.

Coulson wants to see him.

Coulson wants to – oh fuck.

They’ve got the hacker girl - maybe Coulson had her hack into his phone intercept his messages which would be why he hasn’t heard anything from HYDRA lately. Which would mean that they know he’s a double agent, but if that was true then why would Ward be acting so nonchalant. Unless the plan was to lure him into a false sense of security, if it was they’re doing a pretty poor job at it. Though that might just be his paranoia talking.

Leo takes a deep breath, in and out, in and out, before nodding his head once, and heading towards where he knows Coulson’s office is. He suddenly wishes that he had an excuse to swing back around to his bunk, he’s got a few weapons concealed there, but there’s no time for him to do so. Instead, he’s just going to have to walk in there unarmed.

Already he begins running through escape plans in his mind. Calculating just how long it would take to get the back hatch of the plane open and grab one of the parachutes along the right wall. Even as he enters Coulson’s office, his eyes are scanning the room to take everything in and find what he can best use to defend himself if the situation arose.

“You wanted to see me,” he asks.

“Take a seat.”

He’s taken a seat so quickly in his life.

There’s a long moment, before Coulson looks up from the files spread out in front of them, and asks, “is there anything you want to tell me?”

He wants to say: _I’m a HYDRA agent sent to kill the one person I actually care about on this plane and for the past few days I have been trying to find an excuse not to because I realized that I actually care about her a lot more than I am willing to admit. Also please don’t kill me._

However, instead he replies, “no, sir.”

That’s clearly not the answer that Coulson wants to hear, because he lets out a slightly annoyed sigh, before making his point clear, “I had some agents go to your old apartment to collect your things since it seems you will be staying with us a while longer.”

Shit.

He had expected by now that a HYDRA team would have cleared the place by now. There should have been nothing incriminating in there, though that doesn’t stop him from paling at Coulson’s words.

“Is something the matter,” Coulson asks, “Mr. Smith, was it?”

His mouth forms a small ‘oh’ and while he’s not the best judge of character he’s relatively certain that that’s the only card Coulson has to play, especially since he’s now able to get a glance at the papers on the desk, forged visa documents and the leasing paperwork for his apartment.

“I can explain,” Leo says giving a small sheepish smile.

“Do explain.”

“James Smith, he’s a friend of mine, knew I was down on my luck, and couldn’t qualify for a work visa unless I had an actual job here. He offered to do the paperwork for me, we look similar enough that nobody would suspect anything and I would be close enough to Silicon Valley and the Bay that I would be able to find somebody interested in the tech I was creating, which would lead to a job and a work visa of my own,” he lies effortlessly, “obviously things didn’t exactly go according to plan,” which was an understatement of its own, “I’d been so busy with everything here that I had completely forgotten about that.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” Leo affirms.

“If you’re lying to us and I find out there will be consequences,” Coulson says, his words more a warning than a dismal, but Leo takes it as one.

Standing up from his seat, he heads to the door though stops just before he leaves, “you didn’t find anything else did you?”

“Should have I found anything else?”

“No,” he shakes his head, “I suppose not.”

\---

“-so I told them that it its unmodified form it was impossible, because if the modified polysaccharide didn’t contain synthesized forms of nitrogen then the chitin would be cellulose. Which you know, would no longer be translucent, but not only that it break down the proto molecular structure, and doesn’t allow for the hydrogen bonding between the adjacent polymers. Nobody listened to me and you’ll never guess what happened?”

“What?”

“You’re supposed to guess.”

“Uh, the chitin became cellulose?”

“Fitz, were you even listening to me,” she teases him.

“Sorry, it’s hard to stay focused.”

“I was boring you, wasn’t I,” Jemma says, her hands nervously coming up to play with her necklace.

“Not at all,” he quickly reassured her, “you’re very passionate and I-“

“It’s too much isn’t it? People are always telling me that I should slow down and talk in English,” she laughs at that, “but I just get so into things I sometimes forget that not everybody can follow along.”

“No, you were fine,” Leo says, the slightest hint of embarrassment tinting his cheeks, “your passion it is inspiring. I forgot how much you smile when start talking about science, and well I got distracted watching you, how engaged you always are.”

“Leo Fitz, is that compliment? Are flirting with me?”

“I suddenly remember something that I had to do very far away, all of the sudden,” he says quickly surging out of his seat ignoring Jemma’s teasing protests as she reaches out in an attempt to grab his hand and tug her back down with him.

“Fitz, seriously!”

“I have a thing!”

“Fitz!”

There’s something magical in the way she says his name.

“No seriously I have to-“

“What do you have to do?”

“I,” he stops cut off by the sound of his phone vibrating on the table, he grabs it before Jemma can look at the screen. Expecting it to just be some junk mail or something, he waves his phone at her and says, “look at that, duty calls.”

“Duty calls,” she echoes in disbelief.

It was a mistake, he’s playing off an excuse to hide his embarrassment, but he knows that he should have waited till he was back in his bunk to look at his phone, but instead his eyes dart down to the screen clicking open the incoming message that’s from a restricted number.

His expression must be particularly telling, because Jemma’s voice sounds concerned when she speaks up, “Leo, is something that matter?”

 _Yes._ He wants to say, but instead he says, “no, everything’s fine” he says slowly looking up from the screen to meet her gaze, though all he can see are four words spotting his vision: _‘Mission parameters remain unchanged.’_

\---

The nightmares only get worse after that.

His phone is going off more often than usual urging him to take control of the situation and complete the mission sooner rather than later. It’s nearly been two weeks now and HYDRA already has enough people undercover within SHIELD, they don’t need him here, they need him back in some lab in an unknown location developing weapons.

Except, Leo’s slowly spent the last few weeks realizing that that is the exact opposite of what he wants do to. He doesn’t care whose side he’s on or what their motivations are, he never has, but now he finally has something that he cares about.

Somebody that he’s always cared about, and maybe that was why back in HYDRA headquarters he had spoken up when he heard the name of the target, maybe that was why he was here.

Fate, or some nonsense like that that he didn’t believe in, something that brought him here, that gave him a chance to save the one person that had always mattered to him. The person he had tried to hate, tried to be bitter about, tried to kill.

He should have known sitting back in that apartment with her pictures on the wall that he never would have been able to complete the mission.

He should have realized then what he had always known, that he loved her.

‘ _I quit.’_

Somehow he doesn’t think that HYDRA operatives get the luxury of handing in their two weeks’ notice, but frankly he doesn’t give a damn.

\---

“We’re being called into San Francisco,” Coulson says laying out their latest mission parameters, “sources believe that there are HYDRA operatives in the area testing some serum on the homeless population.”

“Similar to the Jolly Green Giant from when we got Fitz.”

“Exactly.”

“Wait, HYDRA they’re those World War Two guys set on enslaving the human race or whatever,” Skye asks.

“Something like that, but they’re still around,” Jemma answers her, “they’ve got this silly saying, I can’t remember it.”

“Cut off one head, and two more will grow in its place,” he says in a hallow voice, missing the looks of confusion from everyone around the group for how exactly he knew the answer to that statement. He’s too busy biting his tongue holding back from warning them that this is just a trap, because then he would have to explain how he knows that and there’s not time for that. Instead, he needs to find a way out a way to not only keep himself alive, but to keep Jemma safe, because if he knows anything about how HYDRA works and after years of being a part of the organization he likes to think that he does, then he knows something about it.

They are still all in Coulson’s office, the plane landed, when something goes wrong. An alarm cracks over the plane’s speaker system, and somebody’s scrambling up to see what the alarm is for.

“A gas hazard in the lab. Did you to leave something on down there?”

“Oh I think I might have,” Jemma says her face flushing, “I’ll be right back, just going to go turn that off.”

“I’m going with her,” Leo says following in suit before anybody can question it, “just in case.”

They take the steps down to where the lab is two at a time, before he notices something amiss. There’s no sound of glass, no sounds of an experiment pouring over, which would have been normal had the soundproof doors of the lab been shut, but instead they are wide open and more importantly the back hatch of the plane is open just a crack, just enough to let light through.

His grabs onto Jemma’s shirt, cutting off her nose of protest by bring up a hand to cover her mouth. He takes his spare hand and raises it up to his lips in a silent plea for her to remain quiet before removing his hand from her mouth, when she seems to comply he bends down to ruck up the leg of his trousers and pull out the small hand pistol that had been strapped there.

“What is that,” Jemma whispers.

“A gun,” Leo replies bluntly.

“And you know how to shoot that?”

“In theory, yes.”

“Leo, what’s going on,” she asks, eyes darting from the entrance of the lab to back upstairs.

He wants to take time to explain everything, but he doesn’t have that time because a second later the other shoe drops, he sees the familiar emblem on a black suit of the man that steps out of the lab pistol raised pointing between them.

“Take your shot and let’s go,” the other guy says, and only then does Leo realize just where his gun had been pointing, he had been about to answer Jemma before and now the weapon remained pointed in the direction he had been facing.

At her.

“Fitz, what’s going on,” she repeats, voice shaking ever so slightly.

“Kid, it’s now or never,” a voice that had become far too familiar to him, though coming from a face that he had never seen before. There had never been a particular need to see his handler before, but now he turns to really get a good look at him.

Leo’s never been particularly good at split second decisions and his finger is on the trigger before he realizes it. He’s never shot anybody before and he doesn’t particularly want to shoot either of them, but he knows what to do, still he squeezes his eyes shut the same second that he squeezes the trigger hearing the body that slumps to the ground.

“FITZ!”

His eyes snap open at the sound of her voice, frantic and loud. He can’t focus on what Jemma is saying, because there’s blood over the floor of the plane, its not his blood and its not her blood, but his hands are still shaking and his gun clatters to the floor falling out between numb fingers, before he races across down the stairs.

He’d never shot somebody before today.

 “Oh god, shit Bartel, I didn’t mean to. I can’t believe I just shot him and oh,” he’s rambling now, the nervousness taking its toll.

“Fitz, what are you rambling about,” she asks.

And well, he supposes it’s now or never.

“I was supposed to kill you,” he says, before he can take the words back, “I’m a HYDRA agent or well I was. They recruited me, once we finished at MIT like how SHIELD recruited you, and I didn’t really realize at the time what was going on, but I don’t think I cared as long as I was in a lab and able to develop things-“

“You mean weapons?”

“Technically, I mean if you’re being all particularly about it, but I. They sent me on this, this mission and I was supposed to kill you back in that coffee shop and take the bio-reactivity formula, that you have on that flash drive that you’re pretending is a necklace from your mother. But then you recognized me, and I, I couldn’t kill you. Jemma, I knew right then that I couldn’t, but I couldn’t tell them that. So I tried to convince them to let me recruit you, but they wouldn’t let me so I quit, except you can’t really quit HYDRA. So they sent somebody else in to do the job, or to finish the job and drag me back,” Fitz looks briefly at the man that he had shot down to protect her before turning back to her, “but now I’m reasonably sure that they’re going to kill me, because I defected, and I just, I could never hurt you. I think I’m in love with you, and I have been for a long time, since back at MIT, but I didn’t really realize it until now and I-“

Whatever else he had been intending to say is cut off, as she reaches forward to grab the front of his jumper and tug her toward him, kissing him into silence.

Honestly, Leo’s not sure if this is actually happening or if he’s died and gone to heaven.

Though once he’s certain that it’s reality, he’s kissing her back and, yeah, this is just as perfect as he had always imagined it to be.

Before too long though they’re pulling apart, her cheeks are flushed as her eyes stare into his, “oh, sorry, I just-“

“No, that was great.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re uh, good at this, kissing thing.”

“I’ve had some practice?”

“You have?”

“Really, Fitz, you didn’t except me remain celibate all my life-”

“Well, no, I just normally that’s not something you say-“

“I wasn’t thinking, you’re highly distracting-“

“I’m distracting, do you have any idea how hard it’s been to-“

“Try and kill me-“

“To focus. When you’re around, honestly, Jemma, I can’t even-“

“FitzSimmons, what’s going on down there,” this time the voice speaking doesn’t belong to either of them, but it crackles over their ear pieces, causing the two of them to jump back instinctively though some how they hands end up clasped together even as they try to separate. It takes him a minute before he realizes that the voice on the other end belongs to Jemma’s superior officer.

She recovers quicker than him, “we’re fine!”

“That’s not what I asked,” Coulson’s voice points out.

“Right, summary, well,” Jemma starts, “Apparently Fitz is a HYDRA agent-“

“Was.”

“Was a HYDRA agent, who was sent to kill me, but obviously he didn’t so they sent somebody else-“

“Agent Bartel.”

“Yes, Fitz, because the name of the agent who just tried to kill us, is very relevant at the moment.”

“Sorry, he was my handler so-“

“Simmons, continue,” Coulson cuts in again.

“Fitz is on our side now, go team,” she says trying to lighten the mood, but Leo can just imagine the deadpan face on the agent on the other side of the headset, “and more HYDRA agents are likely on their way?”

“They’re most certainly on their way,” he says, the dread stuck in his stomach, because this is his fault.

“And how do we know he’s not leading them in and straight to you,” a new voice joins the group, Agent Ward, who never trusted him in the first place.

“He’s not,” Jemma says, far more confident in him that Leo is in himself.

“Are you sure,” Coulson asks.

“Yes,” she answers, squeezing his hand in hers, “most certainly.”

\---

They’ve regrouped as a team by time the next wave of HYDRA agents reach them and they’re far more prepared this time, with Leo having spent the last ten minutes spilling every bit of knowledge he might have on them and letting Skye hack what she can out of the encryption files on his phone which is currently giving her access to HYDRA’s secure servers.

Ward and May are armed and dangerous, and while neither of them seem to entirely trust him they’re at least on board for what was coming.

Though the best part of it was all throughout the whole time of their planning Jemma had never once let go of his hand.

If he was going to die today, then at least he would have that memory and the memory of her silencing him with a kiss. That’s enough that he would almost be willing to walk towards his death with open arms, if he could only get one more of those kisses.

He’s got a gun in his hand, though neglects to mention to Coulson that he’s only ever shot one person before, well technically two, but that was with the Night-Night Gun and hardly counted.

Leo’s job is relatively simple, he’s hanging back with the girl’s because Skye has very little field experience and Jemma hasn’t had any, plus none of the real field agents trust him to be up there with them even if he has sworn a hundred times that he’s on their side now.

They should have been well out of the way of the action, but Leo should have learned by now that thing’s never actually go according to plan.

He’s got his arm raise gun pointed at the man whose broken into their back room, and for a second the two stare each other down, Leo thinks for the briefest moment that he might recognize the man, some HDYRA operative that he’s made weapons for before, but the train of thought doesn’t last for long, because he’s been ruled out as a threat and the nozzle of the gun pointing at him moves away to point at somebody else instead.

There’s not enough time to react, to think about what he’s doing, to put himself in other people’s shoes, because the HYDRA operative is aiming his gun and Jemma, and Leo’s instincts take over as he pushes her out of the way, but not before getting himself out of harm’s way.

There’s a searing pain spreading out from his collar bone and he’s not sure if he’s dying.

It feels like he’s dying

Somebody else fires a gun, probably Skye, three shots before there’s a thump on the other side of the room, but his head is rushing with white noise and he can’t stay focused on what is happening.

All he can think about is the face looming over him, worry and panic spilling over her features as she presses her hands into the juncture between his collarbone and his shoulder.

Over the haze in his mind he hears her voice, “Leo, Leo stay with me, please stay with me. I can’t lose you,” but he loses focus too easily and the next thing he knows everything goes black.

\---

He wakes up slowly, his body feeling entirely too much like lead as he comes to.

Even without opening his eyes he can tell that he must be in some sort of medical facility. The smell of disinfectant permeates through the air and he can feel the steady beat of a heart monitor in the corner that quickens as he begins to awaken.

An IV is in his arm, he can tell when he moves it slightly and there’s some resistance, the pain in his shoulder rises quickly as he does so reminding him of what had happened before he had blacked out, there had been so much blood. Though the pain is not so severe that it renders him incapable of functioning, wherever he is they’ve got the good stuff.

 There is a weight though on his other side, his uninjured side, and for a second that puzzles him until Leo turns his head over to the side and notices who’s pressed up against him.

Her head bowed, asleep after waiting so long for him to wake up, her fingers threated through his once more, a constant reminder of her presence.

Jemma’s here.

She’s alive.

He’s alive.

“Jemma,” he manages, the name struggling to come out of his scratchy throat, but it does the trick because a second later she rouses awake, blinks the sleep out of her eyes before smiling back at him.

“You’re awake,” she breathes, smile wide.

“Yeah,” he rasps.

“Oh,” she responds, shooting up quickly, “let me get you some water, you must be parched.”

She’s reluctant to release his hand, and he feels the same way, but eventually she does so in order to pour him a glass of water and then hands it over to him eyes nervously darting over him surveying the damage.

Once he’s drunk the water, Jemma takes the empty cup from him and sets it off to the side, “how are you feeling?”

“Like hell,” he admits.

Her fingers lace back into his and give him a reassuring squeeze. “There’s morphine if you need it,” she says, pointing out the button with her freehand, “but it’ll put you can under.”

“I think I can wait a little bit longer,” Leo says managing a smile that she mirrors.

He’s being tugged into a hug, that definitely takes some of the weigh off his shoulders, it helps the pain in his chest and he feels the shoulder of his hospital gown gather with wetness, but he doesn’t say anything even when she pulls away rubbing at her eyes. “I was so worried that I lost you, there was so much blood and-“

“I’m fine now,” he reassures her, “you saved my life.”

“No, you saved mine,” she says, the tears still gathering in her eyes threatening to spill.

“We saved each other,” he relents.

He’s not sure where he would be without her, dead most likely. A small part of his brain wonders about what would have happened had he never been given the assignment to kill her. But none of that matters, because they’re hear now and they’re alive.

For the time being that is.

“They’re not going to kill me or anything, because I was being a double agent or,” Leo stammers as the thought come to him.

Jemma’s grip on his hand increases at his words but she shakes her head all the same. “No, of course not, SHIELD’s not inhumane. Plus you saved us, as far as anybody’s concerned you’re a hero, you stopped HYDRA from taking secure information. I mean, once you’re better Coulson’s probably going to give you a debriefing and they’re going to want to try and get more information out of you, but you should be back on the bus with the rest of us in no time.”

“They’re letting me go back,” he says slowly, his disbelief showing in the way he knits his eyebrows together, “after everything.”

“I mean, if you want. I told them I wasn’t going anywhere without you. We’re a team, Fitzsimmons, remember?”

“I remember.”

“Then don’t you ever forget it,” she said leaning forward to kiss him softly, “it’s you and me against the world.”

Leo supposes he could get used to that.

Fitzsimmons.

Just like old times.

Except, so much better.

 

 


End file.
